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ProDefence Ltd

Facebook Sweepstakes 419 Scam Promises $100,000 (€76,000)

A fake Facebook lottery is making the
rounds, promising recipients a prize of $100,000 (€76,000). In reality,
those who respond to the email message that carries the scam will be
asked to pay certain amounts of money that are allegedly needed to
complete the transaction.

Apparently signed by “The Facebook Team,” the message tries to convince
users that all they have to do is report to the nearest Facebook office
with the winning code.

Since the fraudsters are aware that there is no “Facebook office” near
anyone, they tell the recipients to contact them if they don’t know the
location of such an establishment.

This is the part when things become interesting. Users who reply
are asked to visit a certain country to collect the prize, but since the
country is most likely far from the victim’s place of residence, the
crooks offer an alternative.

They offer to send the money in return for a fairly small transaction
fee, that supposedly can’t be deducted from the prize because of legal
or insurance reasons.

Internet users are advised to ignore such claims. No one wins anything from these scams, except for the ones that run them.

In this particular case, it’s clear that everything is a scam, mainly
because it doesn’t make any sense. Why would Facebook use Gmail to
promote its own email services?

Take a look at the phony email, provided by Hoax Slayer and see for yourself:

Dear,

Congratulations! you are among the 100 lucky facebook email users that
won $100,000 USD (One hundred thousand United States Dollars) each in
the just concluded facebook Sweepstakes.

The Sweepstakes was organized to reward facebook email users because of
their undying support and massive usage of the facebook email
service.The facebook email was launched in November 2010 and by April
2012,facebook email users has passed 100 million,we were excited about
this great number of facebook email users within a short period of time
and we are hoping that this Sweepstakes will create awareness and
encourage more facebook users to activate the facebook email feature on
their facebook accounts.